Poor funding model, paucity stall $3.2b eastern rail project three years after

• Contractor removes old tracks, abandons sections
• FG’s 15% counterpart fund paltry, non-committal, residents say
• We are reviewing its financing, committed to its delivery, minister assures

Failure of the last administration to put its money where its mouth is has stalled the rail rehabilitation work on the eastern corridor, three years after its flag-off.
Findings showed that the project, estimated to cost $3.2 billion, has become a hard sell to investors.

It will be recalled that the project, flagged off by former President Muhammadu Buhari in March 2021, was to be funded by 85 per cent foreign loan and 15 per cent counterpart contribution of the federal government, with a delivery timeline of two years.

The Guardian learnt that the federal government’s 15 per cent stake has been instrumental to the ongoing work on the Port Harcourt-Aba section of the over 2000km stretch but the rest has been left fallow.

Besides complaints about the “unattractive” funding model, residents lamented the removal of the old rail tracks without a definite plan for their replacement.

More so, the Eastern corridor got a narrow-gauge approval as opposed to the standard gauge on the South-West and North-West, stretches from Port Harcourt through the South-East, Middle-Belt, North-East and terminates in Maiduguri, Borno state.

The Eastern rail line, in its heydays, covered areas such as Bonny Ports in Port Harcourt, with a spur in Owerri, to link the Aba –Enugu rail line with spurs in Abakaliki and Awka, before linking Makurdi, Lafia, Kaduna, Bauchi, Gombe and Maiduguri in Borno State.

With a total of 61 stations and passing loops, the eastern corridor project measured about 2044.1km.
Just at the end of its scheduled delivery date, in March 2023, the immediate past Minister of Transportation, Mu’azu Sambo, announced that the rehabilitation work would not be realised in the lifetime of the last administration due to paucity of funds.

It was learnt that the foreign loans required to fund 85 per cent of the project were not available.

While those affected by the project rued the back and forth, the contractor handling the rehabilitation work, China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) in May 2023, mobilised to the old tracks and removed the iron tracks, a development that generated mixed feelings among the residents.

Disturbed by the delay in the completion of the rail line, stakeholders in the South-East are calling on the federal government to adopt alternative funding methods to restore train services to the area.

The stakeholders, who began a campaign under the auspices of Njiko Igbo Forum (NIF), tagged, “Eastern Corridor Railway” said they were disturbed by the snail speed that has become the lot of the rehabilitation project and the high probability of its abandonment.

Coordinator of the forum, Okechukwu Obioha, told The Guardian that they were worried that the contract may have been abandoned after the old tracks were removed and wondered why there was little or no attention to it.

Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC)

Obioha noted the rail services run efficiently on standard gauge in Ibadan, Lagos, Abuja, Katsina, and Kaduna up to the Niger Republic.
“It, however, seems that Port Harcourt to Maiduguri, which includes Umuahia, Enugu, Kafanchan, and Bauchi, among others, has been abandoned. Nobody is saying anything meaningful about the rehabilitation work awarded several years ago even when means of movement of goods and other services have gone all-time high in the region. ”

He added that the federal government should not pretend that all is well with the people of the region when they are not enjoying the services being given in other zones, and when the cost of living has continued to rise.

“We refuse to accept this manner of treatment. Let there be action on restoring the train services in this region. When this is done, it will have a huge impact on the economy of this region as was the case several years back. It will also impact other areas of life of the average Easterner. We will not stop this campaign until the project is completed,” Obioha said.

Also, a Public Affairs Analyst, Eze Anthony, stated that the piecemeal approach being adopted by the federal government over the eastern corridor repair was an indication that it was “never ready to see train services restored on the route.”

“If after three or four years, we are still talking about rehabilitating, it means there is no seriousness in making the route work again.
“There are some salient questions that should be addressed in this instance and that is to ask: why is the NRC still paying the staff of the eastern corridor (salary) for doing nothing? Are they saying that the rest of the areas that enjoyed train service before now are no longer part of
Nigeria?

“Go to the headquarters of the NRC in Enugu, the first thing that will greet you are disused locomotives. All the ticketing areas have been converted to business areas.

“There are several offices that are either leaking or abandoned. Recently, they resorted to selling some of their assets including land to private developers allegedly on a Build Operate and Transfer basis. These are some of the things creating worries that rail services may not return to this area any longer.

“The much we have heard so far is that the federal government has not been able to secure the foreign loan it wanted for the completion of the project. If that is the case, why did they remove the old tracks? Who is in custody of those tracks?
“I want to call on the government to change the funding method and embrace the method it adopted in other zones of the country if this must work. Let President Bola Tinubu review this funding method to restore the eastern corridor,” Eze said.

Miffed by the mounting criticism over the delay in the execution of the project, the NRC, which had in January this year, stated that the rehabilitation work had progressed from Port Harcourt to Aba, assured that it would restart train services on the axis completed before the end of March 2024. The promise has not been kept.

Minister of Transportation, Saidu Alkali, who was in Port Harcourt on March 29, however, attributed the inability of the train services to commence in the area already rehabilitated to “technical hitches”, assuring that the service would restart before the end of April.

He said the current administration was still sorting out the financing. “There is no way you can start a project without making all the arrangements. So, as soon as the funds are ready, we are going to start.

“The government is serious and committed to completing all the projects in the country. We have just finished the inspection of the Port Harcourt-Aba rail line and are trying to start the operation in April.

“I have directed the contractor to link Port Harcourt rail to Port Harcourt Port and to Onne Port for freight operations to start,” he said.